HP this week unveiled several initiatives at Interop 2012 in Las Vegas to enhance the provisioning and performance of virtual applications over a network, including an alliance with application delivery controller leader F5.

HP and F5 will partner to speed cloud application deployment from months to minutes through single pane-of-glass policy-based automation and management of application provisioning. The companies have integrated F5's BIG-IP application delivery control manager into HP's Intelligent Management Center (IMC) console where numerous network, system and application provisioning routines can be scaled down into a few policy assignments for faster turn-up.

The HP/F5 integration is also key to HP's bring-your-own-device (BYOD) management offering with IMC, which was also announced at Interop this week. Detailed application data gathered by the F5 management package can be shared with IMC to establish policies on application access by user, device, security profile, etc., for secure on-boarding of wired and wireless devices.

HP's BYOD offering is designed to provide "device-agnostic" network access for secure clients, including self-registration for client-owned devices be they on the wired and/or wireless infrastructure. Network and application access policies can be established and enforced based on the particular device and on user profiles.

With the F5/IMC integration, IT shops can monitor and control application access, and perform user and traffic analysis, HP says.

Another rapid deployment product from HP is its Dynamic Virtual Private Network (DVPN) capability for IMC. With this application, network managers can perform automated "zero-touch" deployment of HP routers across enterprise locations, including campus and branch, with IPSec tunnels.

This reduces the number of configuration steps and potential errors through the router's command line interface, HP says, and can scale to more than 30,000 sites.

Speed is also behind a major upgrade to HP's 10500 campus core switch. The 10500 can now support up to 576 wire-speed 10G Ethernet ports and 48 40G Ethernet ports in a single 12-slot chassis thanks to a backplane upgrade that takes the switch to 14Tbps of capacity, and higher-density line cards -- a 48-port 10G Ethernet module and a new four-port 40G Ethernet board.

Up to four 10500 chassis can be logically linked using HP's Intelligent Resilient Framework (IRF) multichassis bonding technology for a campus "supercore," HP says. HP says the upgrades enable the 10500 to download the entire Library of Congress in under 60 seconds, and conduct 250,000 simultaneous 1080p HD video conferences.

The company also says the switch now has 75% lower latency, 5x the 10G density and 1,000% higher throughput than Cisco's Catalyst 6513E with the new Supervisor 2T engine.

HP this week will also roll out new network optimization and partner support services for its networking gear and architectures. The HP Network Infrastructure Optimization Assessment and the HP Network Application Delivery Controller Service for Microsoft are now available. Pricing varies according to location and implementation.

HP and F5 BIG-IP integration is available now and can be delivered by HP Technology Services as well as HP and F5 channel partners. HP BYOD management modules for IMC will be available in June starting at $2,739.

HP DVPN modules for IMC are currently available, starting at $8,398. The 10500 switch and new line cards are currently available, starting at $32,999.

Jim Duffy has been covering technology for over 28 years, 23 at Network World. He covers enterprise networking infrastructure, including routers and switches. He also writes The Cisco Connection blog and can be reached on Twitter @Jim_Duffy and at jduffy@nww.com.